This invention relates to automated storage and retrieval systems for central warehousing operations that serve large retailing chains and especially to material handling equipment for use in such facilities. More particularly, the invention relates to an automatic storage and handling apparatus for containerized goods, especially cartons, that are loaded to capacity at the top from a conveyor to form a vertical stack and that are unloaded from below upon command by a signal from a central control system.
In recent years, warehousing depots such as for grocery chains and other retail store chains have become more centralized and at the same time larger and more complex. As a result, systems for automating the storage and distribution operations have been developed in an attempt to utilize computerized control systems both for inventory management and for distribution to retail outlets and the like.
In a typical storage and distribution system, containerized consumer goods (i.e. paper products, cleaning preparations, packaged food products, etc. in cartons) are delivered to the warehousing facility from the manufacturer, on pallets. A standard Grocery Manufacturer's Association (G.M.A.) pallet, for example, has dimensions of forty inches by forty-eight inches and may contain forty to eighty cartons. From the receiving dock, where pallets are unloaded from trucks or rail cars, the pallets are frequently transported to a vertical array of racks. When the cartons are selected for redistribution to a retail outlet, a worker extracts cartons from a rack and places them on a conveyor which delivers them to a distribution dock for loading on trucks.
This system is cumbersome and inefficient and requires expensive labor in the extracting of designated cartons for further distribution. The apparatus of the present invention eliminates the manual portion of this operation and affords other features and advantages heretofore not obtainable.